Yangtze dam is finished after 13 years and 1.3m evictions – Tom Miller

Chinese officials and construction workers yesterday celebrated the completion of the Three Gorges Dam, 13 years after work first started on one of the world’s largest and most controversial engineering projects.

In a live TV broadcast, workers poured the last of 28 million cubic metres of cement to finish the gargantuan structure, which stretches for a mile and a half across the Yangtze river. They waved the Chinese national and Communist party flags and set off firecrackers to mark the realisation of an idea first mooted in 1918: to build the planet’s largest hydroelectric dam across Asia’s mightiest river.

See also the previous CDT post “China’s 15-year lesson in how not to build a dam – Jonathan Watts” (link) and “Three Gorges Dam completed on Yangtze River” from Xinhua (link).